Facebook claims the new look news feed is intended to ‘reduce clutter’ and ‘bring stories to life’ by creating a more visual home page.

Photo stories will be blown up to provide rich previews rather than small stories, which is a move towards a more mobile and tablet inspired design to unify the look across different devices.

The redesign will see the Facebook home page becoming widescreen bringing stories to the surface of the news feed to highlight what friends are sharing.

The other change is that there will be multiple other feeds that users can browse in categories. For example, users can see all photos uploaded and shared by friends by navigating to a specific feed section in the top right.

Users will be able to split out pages of brands and/or celebrities through a ‘following’ feed.

Facebook ads will be made more prominent but there will be a new, easier-to-spot button to enable the user to hide the advert .

So what’s the verdict?

Will people really tell?

Undoubtedly there will be mixed opinion from users that don’t like the new release, but given that such a large proportion of Facebook traffic is via smartphone or tablets apps, it’s arguable how much people will notice this latest design.

Are they trying to change the basic function of Facebook?

The previous updates to ‘real time’ stories was a bid to be more like Twitter, and the pop out bar and widening of the page from a 3 column to a 2 column layout in this update feels like a move towards the Google+ design. It’s questionable as to the point of these moves, given that there can be big differences in the user profiles of different social networks. Facebook needs to retain the reason why Facebook users like to use the service.

Is it all actually new?

The update to the ‘new’ multiple feed switcher e.g. to all photos or videos, actually feels like a step backwards, as this was functionality previously available. Although reverting to previous functionality, this does feel like an improvement.

Is it all for ad revenues?

The argument to reduce clutter really only focuses on the sponsored ads that arguably are to blame for creating untidy looking feeds. So it feels as if the update is really for the benefit of the ad revenues Facebook are looking to maximise.

Will advertisers really benefit?

For advertisers is means ads will be larger and in theory less easy to ignore, but it’s questionable as to whether users will respond better given the ‘ad blindness’ or poor targeting that goes on. In fact this could be one of the biggest criticisms from consumers of the release.

The new Facebook news feed update is said to take months before it will reach users, but in the meantime a waiting list is in operation for those eager beavers among us.